GP Philadelphia report *68th*

***WARNING***

This will be long. It will be long and it will have a ton of gratuitous name drops.

You have been warned.


I had a bunch of content planned for this blog, but things at my not-quite-job were heating up and I didn’t have much time to actually write any of the posts. Since this limited format is basically dead, I don’t think I’ll post any of them. I did, however, want to write about my decks and games from the GP.

As awesome as GP Arizona was, GP Philadelphia might have been a little bit better. The weather was about as good, the food was obviously insane, and since it’s much closer to home for me, there were a lot more of my friends there, so the times were through the roof. I decided that I’d talk about the games, as well as the event itself, in the form of a good old fashioned tournament report.

My thoughts on the limited format haven’t really changed that much since GP Montreal. I still like black/white more than anything because of how much fun Scholar of Athreos is and how late it usually goes, and I still think it’s better to just cooperate in the drafts rather than to force an archetype. The Born of the Gods cards are so bad that the format is not the tempo slugfest that triple Theros was, but you should still generally be proactive. You have a bit more time to set up if your strategy happens to be a bit slower, since the turn 2 heroic guy, turns 3+ tricks & bestow games are more like minor inconveniences that happen every once in a while instead of the gold standard of the format. Just be smart, play good cards, and remember ABC - Always Be Closing.

Friday

My plan was to take my damaged car to the shop on Thursday, pick up my free rental car, and leave for Philadelphia on Friday by late morning/early afternoon so I could get to the site by 2PM or so and have a chance at a play mat. I thought the car was going to be myself, Yoel Izsak, Gabby Izsak, and Tommy Ashton, but Tommy went up a day early to hang out with his normie friends and Gabby couldn’t come because he scheduled some jew stuff for Passover. Anand Khare ended up taking their place in the car since he was randomly in DC for work.

What actually ended up happening was that I was busy all day Thursday so I took care of my car stuff on Friday. Anand also had some business lunch thing that wouldn’t be done until 2:30, so we ended up leaving from Yoel’s house in Silver Spring at about 3 and getting hammered by traffic. We managed to complete the 2 hour trip to Philadelphia in 3.5 hours, so we decided to just not even pay for parking at the convention center and go straight to Vishu Doshi and Ernie Marchesano’s house since we were probably dead for playmats. Vishu and Ernie graciously agreed to host Yoel and I for the weekend, which was a huge boost since all of the hotels were sold out because of the Frozen Four.

Although we were all excited to be hanging out again since it had been a long time, all we ended up doing was getting pizza from some hipster pizza place and playing a few games of Love Letter before going to bed. I guess we’re all getting pretty old.

Saturday

We woke up and went straight to Reading Terminal Market. We got breakfast pretzels from the pretzel place, which was a huge punt I think. Not only did I get two and only end up eating one and a few bites of the other one, but I realized that by getting breakfast before the player meeting, I’d have nothing to do during my two byes. This might have been my biggest punt of the weekend.

I saw Brad Taulbee, who was supposed to be staying at Vishu's house on Saturday night. I was excited for that too, possibly more than the GP itself. However, Brad brought Semion Bezrukov with him. Even though I was even more excited to be hanging out with Semion as well, there's no way he would choose Vishu's house over a hotel room, so that kind of killed my hopes for a fun slumber party.

I have to say, I like this trend of GPs starting at 9 instead of 10. It makes the sleep-in special more valuable (even though I didn't get it), and the extra hour on Saturday night is definitely more valuable than it would be on Friday night. I sat down for the player meeting, and opened this pool:

Using the Harry Corvese BTT sealed pool method, I looked at black, white, and green first. I quickly dismissed white as unplayable, since it wasn’t deep at all and didn’t have enough cards to support either basic strategy (aggressive or defensive). Black was great since it had two nice rares in Whip and Downfall, but it also had a lot of junkers like triple Warchanter of Mogis, and I was concerned with its lack of meat-and-potatoes cards overall (no other great removal or Gray Merchants, etc.). Green looked to be the deepest color and I would almost certainly be playing it, since it had mana acceleration and a couple studs like Nessian Asp, Fated Intervention, Time to Feed, and two Sedge Scorpions.

I looked at G/U. I liked the blue cards but there were only like 4 good ones so I ended up scrapping it. Red had more playable cards, but they lent themselves more to a hyper-but-not-that-hyper strategy and green was clearly a midrange strategy, so I scrapped R/G too. I didn’t bother looking at G/W since the white cards were stinky.

That left me with B/G. Although I don’t really like B/G decks, this one would have to do, since it had my most powerful cards in the pool and also the most removal. This is what I ended up registering:

Some notes about card choices:
Aspect of Hydra – I was really excited about this card when I first saw the spoiler, but now I think it’s just pretty bad. It’s asking a lot to make it be Giant Growth or better, and often times it’s barely even Wax. It’s good in some heavy green Swordwise Centaur decks, but I think that’s more of a draft thing.
Setessan Oathsworn – I like this guy in general and originally had him in, but after taking a closer look at my pool I decided that I didn’t have enough things to target him with and decided not to stress out my mana.
Drown in Sorrow – This card is pretty nice, but I feel like the sealed decks that it’s good against are the exception and not the rule. That’s why I chose to board it rather than start it.
Fleshmad Steed – I like playing 2 drops, but to make it into my midrange deck it has to be pretty good and this one is passable at best.
Returned Centaur over Forsaken Drifters – I like the Centaur more for its immediate effect. You can automatically fill your graveyard up for Whip instead of waiting around for your 4/2 to die, and you can also ruin enemy scrys. Additionally, I felt like I’d rather be defending, and Returned Centaur got a big booty so I call it big booty.
Necrobite – Like many others, I have memories of Necrobite being horrible in Avacyn Restored or whatever other set it was from, so I dismissed it as horrible in this format too. Then, I read an article by this beautiful human being:

(the article can be found here)

It made sense – combat happens quite a bit, especially the chumping of large voltron guys. Why not try and leverage some of those chumps into removal and huge board swings? I didn’t actually cast very many Necrobites in this format before this event, but I was genuinely excited to try them out.

Round 3 – Jose Mendoza

Jose was a nice guy from the Bronx. His deck was basically G/W dorks. 

Game 1, neither of us did much except add creatures to the board. I was lucky enough to draw my good creatures (I'm referring to Nessian Asp and Vulpine Goliath), so after a few attacks, a defensive Glimpse of the Sun God from my opponent, and a few more attacks, we were headed to game 2.

After game 1, I really really had to go to the bathroom, and not just #1 if you know what I mean. I called the judge over and then ran to the first set of bathrooms on the right side of the convention hall. When I got in, there was a custodian standing in front of the two stalls, one of which was taken. I said to him, “is that one open?” His response was to kindly open the door for me. I went in, only to find that the toilet was full to the brim with wadded up pieces of toilet paper and who knows what else. Still suffering, I ran over to the left side of the convention hall to the other set of bathrooms. I went in to find the same situation – one stall taken, the other absolutely full of something absolutely unholy. Although I was absolutely defeated, all of the sprinting managed to calm my gastrointestinal turmoil, and I was able to go back and finish the match without being in extreme discomfort the whole time.

Game 2 was more of the same thing. He played some early dudes, but at a leisurely pace, and wasn’t able to accomplish much before I had a menacing board. He had to use Glimpse defensively again, and after that it wasn’t long until my big guys powered through his little ones.

3-0

My immediate priority after this round was to find the secret bathroom, which ended up being upstairs.

Round 4 – Samuel Coppock

Sam was excited to be 3-0 but expressed some trepidation about how the rounds will be getting harder as his record improves. He was also playing white, but I forget what his other color was. All I remember about this match was that his deck was very good and his opening in game 1 was T2 Hero of Iroas, T3 Phalanx Leader, T4 bestow Observant Alseid, and I somehow still managed to win. He got super flooded in game 2 and showed me the rest of his deck which had an Elspeth. I felt really lucky to fade all the strong cards in his deck and beat him.

4-0

After this round I found Yoel, who was 3-1. We agreed to each buy a pack of Modern Masters and gamble the contents of our packs on who opened the highest mana cost rare. I ended up opening Woodfall Primus, which handily defeated his Academy Ruins. We both ended up losing though because the packs were $20 each, and I’d be lucky to sell the cards I opened for more than like $3. When and why did Modern Masters product get so expensive?
 
Round 5 – Aaron Lindo

My opponent said he knew who I was, because he was from upstate New York and was familiar with all the Canadians like Jon Stern, Alex Hayne, Josh McClain, etc. I got a huge kick out of this before telling him that McClain and I were not actually from Canada, even though McClain has a Canadian flag on his shirt half the time.

His deck was a pretty goofy midrange RUG deck. He had some heavy hitters, including a Tromokratis, but I managed to draw my 3 good rares each game and power through his power. He also got super flooded in game 2, which is apparently the only way I can ever win.

5-0
 
It was around this time that I found Anand sitting next to Chris Mascioli. Anand excitedly proclaimed “oh good, we’re all here, you two can finally meet.” Anand spent the last two tournaments trying to convince me that Chris and I would be best friends because, and I quote, “you’re both real people.” I didn’t really know Chris before this (although I was aware of his online presence), but I thought that explanation for why any two people should be friends was hilarious, especially if I’m one of them. Still, even though it goes against my strict “no new friends” policy, I basically didn’t have any control over the matter, so after an awkward introduction Chris and I are now absolute best friends forever.

Round 6 – Wenzel Krautmann

I had heard my opponent’s name before, but didn’t know much about him other than the fact that he was a European pro. His deck was U/G.

I won the die roll and chose to play. In game 1, he played a drop on 3. I played my first drop on 4, a Graverobber Spider. On his turn 4, he played an Island, then attacked his creature into mine. I could have blocked and neither creature would die unless he had a trick, but I decided that it was too likely that he had something and didn’t want to lose my spider like that, so I didn’t block. He then cast Courser of Kruphix, and the top card of his deck was an Island. I’m not sure if there’s some 4 mana trick in blue or green that I’m unaware of, but I can’t help but feel like he could have sequenced that turn a little better. He also forgot at least one Prescient Chimera scry trigger.

There was a turn where he was attacking me with Prescient Chimera, Horizon Chimera, and one other 3 power creature, and all I could do to have a chance at winning was to trade my 2/1 Blood Toil Harpy for his Chimera and take the rest, going from 10 to 2. I blocked the best way I could, neither of us had any effects, and he said “take 6.” He didn’t realize that Horizon Chimera had trample. The extra two life let me live for another turn and from there I was able to draw Nessian Asp, monstrify it and start abyssing him. I definitely would have lost that game if it weren’t for a few sloppy plays on his part.

He asked the judge for some basic lands for game 2 so he could board into another color.
It ended up being white for Excoriate, which was quite good against my deck. I lost game 2 pretty handily.

Game 3 was crazy and very unusual. It started off with him being mana screwed. I tried as hard as I could to capitalize, but was unable to accomplish anything meaningful before he drew a 4th mana source and immediately slammed Excoriate on my only source of offense. A few turns elapse and suddenly my back is against the wall. I cast a Returned Centaur with the intent to mill something nice to use with my Whip of Erebos, and I end up making a mistake and milling 5 cards instead of 4. (I thought it was Commune with the Gods, which is also in my deck.) I immediately called a judge, who gave me a warning and instructed me to shuffle the 5th card (a Necrobite) back into my deck. After I did that, my opponent’s next turn played out in such a way that my only outs to not lose were Hero’s Downfall and Nessian Asp, and I instantly drew Nessian Asp. He attacked a Prescient Chimera into it and I had no choice but to block, and he had a Feral Invocation for it, and my immediate next draw step was Hero’s Downfall to kill it and stabilize. After a few uneventful draw steps for my opponent, I was able to take over the game.

Between my opponent’s goofs and mine, I definitely didn’t deserve to win that match, but I got rewarded for being sloppy. I can’t believe how incredibly lucky I got for things to play out the way they did.

6-0

After this round I proposed the following deal to anyone I came across. I had the stack of Modern Masters cards that I won in the Yoel booster challenge, and said that there was at least one rare and one foil in them, and that I would sell the pile for $4. Unsurprisingly, everyone I asked said no, although McClain did offer me $3.50 which I was ready to take until he said that he didn’t actually have three $1 bills. I couldn’t make change either so the deal was off. I ended up using one of the commons as a knife to cut a donut that Conley Woods gave to me and Josh to split, then selling the rest of the pile for $5 to a dealer.

Round 7 – Gaudenis Vidugiris

This was a feature match, covered here.

There isn’t really much for me to add. I got destroyed very rapidly by Prognostic Sphinx in each game. I tried as hard as I could to get him to block with it the turn he played it each game so I could kill it with Necrobite, but he was too smart for that nonsense.

6-1

After day 1 I went back to read this feature match and found that my name was misspelled as “Majleton,” which was a huge tilt.

Round 8 – Silas Waltzer

Silas seemed pretty nervous to be at the top tables. He had a controlling U/B deck.
We split the first two games. I won game 1, but I lost game 2 to an untimely Sudden Storm locking up the race for Silas. I’m not quite sure yet but I think that card might be a higher pick than Retraction Helix.

The interesting game was game 3. I mulliganed to 6 on the play and kept a hand of three Forests, Commune with the Gods, Blood-Toll Harpy and Forlorn Pseudamma. I kept because I didn’t want to go to 5 on the play, and this hand isn’t all that bad if I can just draw a Swamp. Already I spotted a mistake, because I forgot to board out the stupid Pseudamma for game 3, but this was not the time to lament my poor decisions. My turns went something like this:

T1 Forest
T2 draw Forest, play Forest, cast Commune, reveal forest, swamp (tilt), swamp (TILT), swamp (TIIIIIIIIILT), Sylvan Caryatid (nice!).
T3 draw some black card probably, play Forest, play Sylvan Caryatid.
T4 draw Artisan’s Sorrow, play Forest, play Blood Toil Harpy.
T5 draw some other black card probably, play Artisan’s Sorrow.

Here’s where the tricky part comes in. The two cards I see from the scry are Erebos’s Emissary and Whip of Erebos. Whip is actually probably just unbeatable in this matchup since he’s U/B, but I don’t have a second black source, and having to waste a turn drawing it could potentially cost me the match (in addition to just plain feeling really, really bad). I wish I could remember more of the game state so that I could better analyze this decision. The only thing I do remember is that I was being attacked by Siren of the Night Song, which I discarded my useless Pseudamma to.

I ended up being responsible and putting them both on the bottom. I’m not sure if I would have lost for sure if I was behind a turn on all my draw steps, but it sucked playing the rest of the game knowing that my best card was on the bottom of my library.

I ended up losing the game despite leading my opponent into a bad block (made bad only by the existence of Necrobite) that let me survive his Servant of Tymaret for a zillion more turns. I was off by 1 damage in either direction – if I had one more life or had dealt one more point of damage somewhere, I’d have won.

6-2

I try as hard as I can not to get upset after losing these days, but this loss really upset me. Maybe it was because I was so close, maybe it was because I started out 6-0 and then was at risk of not making day 2. Maybe it was because I felt like I deserved to beat my obviously less experienced opponent (which is a toxic mindset to have, although it definitely creeps in from time to time). I’m not sure exactly.

Round 9 – Trey Van Cleave

This was the second time I have played against Trey, the first time also being in round 9 of a GP, GP Louisville. I remember winning that match in extra turns by peeling Polukranos in a situation where I would have been very dead otherwise. His deck for this tournament was an aggressive U/W deck.
The match itself was pretty uneventful. My creatures outclassed his in game 1, and in game 2 he mulliganed to 5 on the play and missed his second land drop multiple times.

It always feels bad beating someone out of day 2, but Trey was really nice and handled it very well.

7-2

So, after missing day 2 twice in a row (both times in Standard, which apparently I suck at), I managed to finally make day 2 again. I didn’t love my deck, so I’m a bit surprised that I was able to make day 2 with it, but Necrobite was bonkers all day and nobody ever expected the second one. Frank Skarren is a genius.

While looking for anyone in my car, I ran into Mike Haley, aka 3T, who was assembling a crew of people (mostly from Pittsburgh) to go to a place called Barcade, which is exactly what it sounds like – a bar with a bunch of arcade games. I asked Vishu where it was and conveniently enough, it’s in Fishtown, which is super close to where Vishu lives. I said that I would probably go, although I didn’t realize that I might be the only person in our car interested in going and the unique challenge that would present.

I found Vishu and Yoel, both of whom failed to make day 2, and we set out to find Ernie. He was still playing his match, which I quickly found out was also for day 2. Vishu’s brother Vivek, and Vivek’s friends Pat, Rich, and Josh, were all birding. Ernie ended up winning and we all made plans to eat at this Chinese place in fishtown called Capital Beer.

There were 8 of us, and since Vishu had to begrudgingly ask for ice since his soda wasn’t cold at all, he became skeptical of the restaurant’s ability to get our orders right. This quickly turned into a bet between Ernie and Yoel. Yoel put up $60 to Ernie’s $10 that the server would mess up at least one thing. Even though I didn’t have any action at all, it was still a huge sweat watching the server bring out plate after plate, only to find that they were all correct. It looked like Ernie was going to collect $60 until Vishu reminded us that he ordered an appetizer that hadn’t come yet and probably wasn’t going to come. After we got the bill and the appetizer wasn’t on it, Ernie paid Yoel $10. To add insult to injury, Ernie was a part of a 5 man credit card game, and after powering through through the language barrier and getting our server to understand that we wanted her to choose a number between 1 and 5, you can probably guess which number she chose and which card was Ernie’s.

After dinner, Vishu, Ernie, Yoel and I all wanted to hang out, but couldn’t figure out anything to do since nobody else wanted to go to Barcade since there would probably be tons of hipsters there. Ernie and Yoel ended up being too tired, so Vishu and I decided to see what the Penthouse club that we kept seeing billboards for on 95 was like. Unfortunately, we got there and the cover was outside our budget, so we turned around and headed home. I got Vishu to drop me off at Barcade and ended up meeting up with 3T and the rest of the Pittsburgh-ish crowd. The highlights of the evening for me were getting to play an actual Magic Sword cabinet, and high rolling my quarter vs. Bing Luke’s 3 cents and then losing 50 more cents trying to win my original quarter back. 3T and his girlfriend were kind enough to give me a ride back to Vishu’s house, where I got to fall asleep by 1AM.

Sunday

This was my pod for draft 1:

Jason Laforet
Alex Majlaton
Yong Li Liang
Andrew Maine
Kyle Morrisson
Carson Wang
Kevin Michael
Roberto Guzman

The only player in my pod that I recognized was Andrew Maine, so if could manage to draft a good deck and dodge him then I liked my chances of 3-0ing.

When the judge calling the draft told us to count the cards face down, not one but TWO people in my pod called a judge over for the same exact reason: when they were counting all the cards face down, one of them was face up. I was cracking up on the inside. I definitely liked my chances of 3-0ing.
My BNG pack had Nessian Wilds Ravager, Nyxborn Wolf, Oracle’s Insight, and not much else. Despite disliking green, I didn’t want to start off with Oracle’s Insight, and that rare looks pretty powerful. I ended up taking it. I took an Archetype of Imagination second, a Siren of the Silent Song 3rd, and a Forlorn Pseudamma fourth, wanting/hoping to end up U/B. Every color ended up drying up though, so I was left with this after pack 1:

I was definitely not as confident in my ability to 3-0 with this pile of crap. I was open to anything in packs 2 and 3, but it looked like I’d definitely be playing green/x.
It was clear that red was open, and green was still reasonably open, so I ended up with R/G. Not a color combo I particularly like, but whatever. This was my deck:

I think it was pretty straightforward to build. I didn’t love it, but it was playable at least.

Round 10 – Jason Laforet

I asked my opponent how his draft went, and he didn’t seem to like his deck that much. I responded by saying “Was it just me, or was that first pack horrible?”

“Oh yeah, you were in my pod, that’s funny.”

I thought the fact that he thought that was funny, was hilarious. It’s not my style to make anyone feel bad about being inexperienced, so I kept it to myself and politely told him that you only play against people that were in your pod.

As far as the games, went, he was playing a U/W heroic-type deck. My draw was immaculate in game 1 and I was able to easily win.

In game 2, I kept this hand on the draw: Forest, Forest, Forest, Voyaging Satyr, Feral Invocation, Kragma Butcher, Everflame Eidolon. I suppose you can make a case for mulliganing this, but being on the draw and having three draw steps and lots of live draws to do something (since I’m definitely playing Satyr on 2), I kept. I guess the Magic gods didn’t like this, because my first 3 draw steps were red cards. On the other hand, even if they were cards I could use, my opponent’s opening was T2 Phalanx Leader, followed by two other drops, a Chosen by Heliod, and a Dauntless Onslaught, so I might not have been able to win no matter what my draw steps were.

My draw was immaculate again in game 3, and my opponent stopped playing lands after 4, so he had trouble keeping up and I won pretty easily.

8-2

Round 11 – Andrew Maine

Andrew was the only player in the pod that I recognized. We’re player meeting buddies – since MAI is so close to MAJ in the alphabet, we usually sit next to each other at the player meeting for every GP. (Michael Majors is often there too.) We’re also GP rivals – this will be the fourth time we’ve played in a GP, and the third time on day 2.

He was directly to my left in the draft. His deck was the U/G deck that I started out wanting to draft. I’m not sure how he ended up U/G and I didn’t, but I guess he probably took the Nyxborn Wolf that I passed and then just got fed the goods in pack 2.

The match went to 3 games, but I don’t remember much of it. I remember being taken by surprise by Aspect of Hydra in the game that I lost, and that he flooded out a bit towards the end of game 3, but that’s it.

9-2

Round 12 – Yong Li Liang

I’m going to tell you a secret.

Up until this tournament, I had never 3-0ed a draft in a premier event.

OK, that’s not entirely true – I went 3-0 in draft 2 of Nationals 2005, where my record going into the draft was 2-5. For obvious reasons, I don’t count that one.

I also went 2-0 in draft 2 of GP Indianapolis 2008, and then got scooped into the top 16 (back when that was good for a PT invite) by legendary nut human Mike Patnik. I ended up getting 17th on breakers. I don’t count that one either.

Every other premier event draft I ever did, I came up short in some way. Even in the limited GP that I top 8ed, my records were 2-1 and 2-0-1.

This was my chance to finally unlock that achievement for real.

Yong’s deck was an aggressive B/R deck. He came out of the gates fast in game 1, playing a creature on 2, 3, and 4, and then a Minotaur Skullcleaver on 5. I was dead pretty quickly.

For game 2, I boarded in Pheres Band Centaurs and Guardians of Meletis.

I had an awesome Satyr Hedonist draw in game 2, and was able to establish a squad of dreamy beefcakes before my life total was in any danger.

My opponent chose to play for game 3, and then mulliganed. Then he mulliganed again. Then, he mulliganed one more time. He was starting the game with 4 cards.

I could taste the 3-0. It was so close.

Then he played Akroan Crusader on turn 1. Fortunately, so did I.

He played Titan’s Strength on turn 2. He kept his card on top. I didn’t have any good blocks so I took 5.

I played Satyr Hedonist on 2.

He played Fearsome Temper on turn 3, and attacked for 5 again. I could have double blocked to get his guy off the board, but I had enough stuff in my hand (Savage Surge among other things) that I wanted to get more value out of it.

I played a third land and passed.

He did what I wanted him to do (activate Fearsome Temper and attack), and attacked with all 3 of his guys. I played Savage Surge on my Crusader and traded everything off.

I managed to stabilize at 10 life, and all he had left was one card and three lands.

From there, I found a Guardians of Meletis and was able to carefully play out the cards in my hand and win.

10-2

I 3-0ed, but even with an opposing mulligan to 4, I had to earn it.

While waiting for the next draft to start, I found Mani Davoudi finishing up a game of gin against Oscar Jones. Mani set his deck from the first draft aside, and while I was looking at it, he put the deck of playing cards down. I did the only thing a reasonable human would do in that spot: pick it up, shuffle it with his draft deck, and propose a game of Gin Magic.

The rules of Gin Magic are simple: you draw a 10 card hand and then choose whether you want to play Gin or Magic each turn. If you choose Magic, you get to draw a card, play a land, cast spells, attack, etc. If you choose Gin, you get to draw a card or pick up the top card from the graveyard, and discard a card. You could also potentially knock. I couldn’t tell you much more beyond that because I was inventing the game as I was shuffling the decks together.

What I do know is that scry cards are extra busted since you can have a better idea of what game you want to choose if you know what card you’ll draw, and that choosing to play Gin on a turn after your opponent casts a nice spell or bins a good creature is excellent since you can pick it up out of the graveyard and reuse it.

This tomfoolery went on for more turns than I expected – long enough to draw the attention of a handful of onlookers, including PV, who didn’t waste any time criticizing Mani’s plays once he had a rudimentary understanding of the game I just made up. Thankfully, the next draft was about to start before either of us were close to winning, since I had no idea what would actually constitute “winning.”

Here was my second pod:

33     Pyka, Jeffrey * [USA]     30     65.00%
34     De Los Santos, Juli * [USA]     30     64.57%
35     Goldstein, Danny * [USA]     30     64.19%
36     Akpinar, Tim * [USA]     30     64.17%
37     Burnett, Kai * [USA]     30     64.00%
38     Majlaton, Alex * [USA]     30     63.88%
39     Beaty, Aaren * [USA]     30     63.41%
40     Stroh, Brian * [USA]     30     63.14%

This pod has a few more people that I recognize. I lost to Jeffrey Pyka in round 3 of GP Cincinnati, and then he went on to 9-0 day 1 and top 8 the event. Danny Goldstein is from Maryland also and I’ve been seeing him around at local events forever. He’s been starting to compete more lately though, so I suppose he’s picking up a few tricks if he’s here in the X-2 draft with me. Finally, I remember frequently seeing Brian Stroh’s name at the top of the DCI rating list back when that was a thing, but I never actually played against him or interacted with him in any meaningful way (or at all).

Danny was to my immediate right, so he was passing to me.

I first picked Ephara’s Enlightenment out of a pretty terrible pack. I normally don’t like taking those cards and committing to two colors right away, but this was by far the best card in the pack, and besides, nobody said that I had to draft U/W. I second picked Siren of the Fanged Coast and, since there was a common missing, I assumed that meant that blue would be reasonably available. Siren is a pretty good card anyway, so I went with it.

I bumbled around for the next few picks as every color dried up turbofast as usual, and ended up in green somehow, with two Swordwise Centaurs. Packs 2 and 3 were unkind also. I was trying to draft U/G, but no blue cards came from either direction at any point in time, so I ended up with this uncomfortable assembly:

I hated this stupid deck. I absolutely do not advocate trying to draft a deck like this – the double splash is horrible and clunky. Nevertheless, at the very least I had a clear strategy (curve out with green 3/2s and heroes and enhance them), so the best I could do was try to enact it. The only good part about building this deck was that I got to sit next to my good buddy Jarvis Yu during deckbuilding.

Round 13 – Tim Akpinar

Tim was a pretty nice guy who recognized me as “the Affinity guy.” It still kind of blows my mind that there are people that I’ve never met that know who I am. After my Affinity articles went up on SCG, I’ve had someone come up to me at every GP since then and thank me for them, which is an awesome feeling.

Tim’s deck was U/B. In game 1, the plan was going full steam ahead, as I played two Agent of Horizons and snuck a bunch of early damage in with intent to make them unblockable to get the last few in. However, Tim had a ton of 2 drops, and was able to lock up the race with a Sudden Storm.

Not much happened in game 2 – I didn’t play a third land for a couple turns, and Tim had way too many drops for me to be able to stabilize.

10-3

I can’t top 8, but I could still potentially top 16 and it would be hard to miss top 32 if I went 2-0 from here, so there’s still quite a bit to play for.

Round 14 – Aaren Beaty

Aaren was directly to my left in the draft, so I was super curious to see what he ended up drafting since I felt like every color was being cut from every direction. Turns out, he was B/W.

I won the match in two games – I got a very good draw in game 1, and I was able to load up a huge Staunch-Hearted Warrior in game 2 and swarm through an active Spear of Heliod (one that I regrettably had to pass him) for a ton of damage.

11-3

Round 15 – Kai Burnett

Kai was a cool dude from upstate New York. Turns out, he was in a similar situation to me pro points wise – one great GP finish or two good ones would give him Silver and qualify him for the next PT this season as well as PT Honolulu next season.

His deck was B/R Minotaurs, featuring two copies of Kragma Warcaller. It wasn’t as fast as the B/R deck I played in R3 of the first pod, but it was capable of hitting harder.

I had a pretty good draw in game 1, but I only drew Forests and ended up just trading off my creatures with his. His ability to cast all his spells easily carried him through the game after I spent all my available resources.

Game 2 was pretty interesting – he played both of his Warcallers in game 1, so I knew to play around them. I was able to cast spells this time, so it was pretty easy to keep hammering away with a threat while leaving another back to block a surprise minotaur.

For game 3, I kept a hand on the draw that had Forest, Plains, Nylea’s Presence, and four great 3+ mana cards. He Thoughtseized me, and took Nylea’s Presence after some deliberation, which was a huge dent. Now I had one less draw to find a land, and I’d have to draw an Island eventually to be able to play all my cards. I never actually drew a third land, so I died to a bunch of minotaurs.

11-4

I can’t say I was too surprised that my deck went 1-2, since I thought it was horrible. On the bright side, since the 1 point from T64 would be useless to me because of the GP cap, missing T64 on breakers would only cost me $50 that I don’t care too much about.

The standings went up and I got 68th, good for $250. Not bad! I never thought I was very good at draft, but here I am cashing limited GPs and failing to make day 2 of Standard ones. It’s nice that Wizards increased the payout to make sure that X-4 almost certainly cashes. Going X-4 and not cashing would feel horrible, but going X-5 and missing money is fine since you have to suck pretty bad to go X-5 so you probably don’t deserve it.

I had dinner with Anand, Tommy, Yoel, Vishu, Ernie, Vivek, and Pat, and then came back to the site to bird the top 8 and then hop in on the mega-Werewolf games that Josh McClain was organizing. Tommy had to go back to his friend’s apartment, Anand had a train to catch, and everyone else was except Yoel was tired. Yoel didn’t want to stay on Sunday night for a ton of werewolf games so he caught a train back to MD, meaning I was more or less free to do whatever I wanted.

I came back to find two pretty big Werewolf games already in progress. Right as Ben Moir was getting lynched from one of them, I noticed that Mikey P was playing in it, and that he had all his boxes of Dominion stacked up beside him. I asked Ben if he wanted to play for money, and my eyes became two huge dollar signs (albeit inferior Canadian ones) when he said that he would play for $20/game. I asked Mikey P if we could play with his Dominion cards, and he gave me this super nervous “Oh… um… er… well…” reaction that made it super clear that he wasn’t really trying to let us play, so I had to settle for birding the games and watching Harry Corvese go on full blown monster mega from faulty wolf logic. If I were Ben, I would be trying to find Mikey P's address to send him a thank you card for saving me hundreds of CAD.

One of the Wolf games finished early (the non-Harry one) and I was able to squeeze in a quick game of Resistance, where the all-star spy squad of me, McClain, and Seth handily defeated the loser resistance squad 3-0. After watching Frank destroy everyone in the GP, we all made plans to reconvene in the lobby of the Marriott for the massive wolf festivities, but not before I spotted Mani Davoudi carrying around a draft set that was begging for me to open it.

I proposed the following deal to Mani: I got to open his set, and if the cards I opened were worth more than twice what the set was worth, we would sell them and split the money. If not, I would buy the set from him. Mani quickly realized that he can’t lose and snapped it off. I ended up opening nothing in that set, or in the three sets that I ran it back with, but the sweat was well worth all the money I spent. Mani said he had plenty more packs if I wanted to keep playing, but I was off it at that point, and the giant game of wolf was about to start.

In an effort to shamelessly increase the number of namedrops in this report, here is a complete alphabetical list of Wolf players in our 26 player game, which was moderated by none other than Joe Demestrio:

Will Blondon
Reuben Bresler
Christian Calcano
Harry Corvese
Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa
Mani Davoudi
Chris Fennell
Alex Hayne
Nathan Holiday
Peter Ingram
Marc Lalague
Nick LeBlanc
Seth Manfield
Chris Mascioli
Josh McClain
Ben Moir
Greg Ogreenc
Nhi Pham
Frank Skarren
Joe Spanier
Jon Stern
Kar Yung Tom
Josh Utter-Leyton
Craig Wescoe
Conley Woods

And, of course, yours truly.

The roles were distributed as follows: 6 werewolves, 1 traitor, 1 seer, 1 devil, 1 vigilante, 2 medics, and the rest villagers.

This was my role:

The game started off with a wolf kill during the night. The wolves chose to eat Greg Ogreenc, which was hilarious and probably also good for the game, since a game this massive needed his strict style of co-moderating.

Due to the size of the game, the daytime rounds were more like a “whodunit” party with people clustering off and interrogating each other rather than a normal sized game where everyone sits in a circle and accuses each other. I had never played a game like that and I was really enjoying myself.

I was introducing myself to Will Blondon, one of the few people in the game I hadn’t met yet, when I included in my introduction the standard question of “are you a wolf?” He jokingly answered “yes,” which I thought was very suspicious due to the 80/20 rule – if someone ever jokingly answers “yes” to that question, they are more often than not a wolf (or at the very least, an inexperienced player who doesn’t deserve to live). Since I wanted to get the game moving, I tried to drum up a bit of support to lynch him. The first movement wasn’t successful, but someone initiated a second one, and he was our first lynch. Turns out, he was our Seer. Oops!

The wolves killed Jon Stern in the second night, which we all thought was perplexing. Jon is the type of player who is typically very quiet and calculating in the first few turns, so we weren’t sure why the wolves wanted him dead so quickly. While trying to figure it out, Alex Hayne proposed this theory:

“Did you consider that he might have just died of old age?”

As medic 1, I healed Harry during the night, only to find that during the day there was only 1 death instead of 2. Either the other medic’s heal was successful, or mine was.

I quickly found Harry, who was talking privately with Nhi, and asked him if he was a wolf. After he said “no,” I told him that I knew he wasn’t, because I was medic 1 and I healed him during the night. It was a risky play, especially dumping all that info in front of Nhi (who I was unsure of at the time), but it ended up paying off. Harry worked his master villager magic and quickly found out who the other medic was. It ended up being Seth, so Seth and I were able to set up a strong medic wall where we would save ourselves from death every other turn. (Part of the medic rules for this huge game was that a medic couldn’t ever target himself, so we weren’t completely invincible.)

Harry was able to develop a trusted network of probable villagers, one of them being Alex Hayne. Alex was excellent and gathering information and I trusted all of his reads, especially a few rounds in when he had access to the information about Seth and I being medics. If a wolf had that information, we’d have been dead, so I felt like I could rely on everything he said. I trusted Nhi and Wrapter for this reason also – they were part of Harry’s trust network and if they were wolves, we’d have been dead much faster. I was skeptical of KYT because of the Jon Stern lynch, but Alex vouched for him, so I had a lot of villager resources to work with.

One by one, the trust network got killed off, including Seth after two consecutive nights of trying to kill him. After Seth died, I was basically a turn ahead (or behind) of the wolves – I wasted my heals on good villagers before realizing that I knew they were a threat to the wolves before the wolves did, and they just killed them the next night.

The game boiled down to seven players – me, Frank, Calcano, Nate Holiday, Wascoe, Nhi, and KYT. There were 2 wolves, 1 vigilante, 1 medic, and 3 villagers. Of that group, I only trusted Nhi and KYT to be villagers. The vigilante was silent the whole game and didn’t use his kill, so I reasoned that if the vigilante came out, we could kill one of the 3 unknowns and vigilante kill the other one, and if we hit at least one wolf we would win. The vigilante still kept quiet though, and time in the round was running out, so we just lynched Calcano due to prior suspicion from Alex Hayne. He ended up being a villager. During that night, I healed Wascoe and I’m not really sure why – he could, in theory, have been a wolf. When we woke up, the mod told us that Nate died during the night, and he was a wolf. Wescoe then revealed that he was the vigilante and killed him, and then I finally came out as the healer. From there it was obvious that our GP champ was the other wolf and no time was wasted killing him. Craig said that he sandbagged the vigilante kill even though I had reduced the game to a flip, because another wolf could claim vigilante as well and incite a bunch of confusion. We definitely won because of that play. Super sick game overall.

There was another game starting but I kind of wanted to get back to Vishu’s house before it was too late, so I was able to hitch a ride from the Long Island car of Frank, Pete Ingram, Calcano, and Joey D. While walking to the car, I found this wonderful treasure just lying on the streets of Philadelphia:

All I could think about looking at that cover was what Ben Friedman’s description of young Carrera would be – probably “she thick doe” said multiple times in succession.

I forced Frank to put it in and switch to track 4, which was titled “Brand New Funk 2013 feat. Nate Nizzle, E-Hos, & Antwan Davis” and it was in fact, funky as shit. Frank was having none of it though, and we were back to white people shit within a matter of seconds.

After they dropped me off, I hung out with Vishu for a little before heading back home to Maryland. We talked about how money drafting was dying, and how “beefing” in general was dying and that everyone was more or less friends with everyone else these days. I definitely miss money drafting (although I don’t know why, since I’m down DI lifetime from it), but I like getting along with as many people as I can. If I never money drafted again, I don’t think I would be too upset.

Speaking of the term “DI,” someone asked me what it meant over the weekend, which is something I haven’t been asked in quite a long time. Being unsure of what it meant or where it came from myself, I did some extensive research (which basically just involved asking Tommy and Tim Aten).

Around 15 years ago, the hot magic slang was to add “der,” a German word for “the,” in front of everything – der stains, der gas, etc. For example, “don’t pick that card, that card is der stains.” “Infi” was also widely used at that time, so it was only a matter of time before things of great quantity were described as “der infi.” That got shortened to DI, which stuck around to this day because it has a very pleasing ring to it. It’s definitely one of my favorite pieces of Magic slang, and I’d hate to see it die.

I listened to the rest of that CD on the way home and it ended up being wack as fuck - not something I could endorse, even ironically. Two of the beats were just straight up stolen from Pharcyde and Tribe Called Quest tracks, and one was just basically a no-effort cover of LL Cool J’s “Doin It.”

Even though my finish was mediocre, I couldn’t stop smiling on the quiet, solo drive home because of how much fun the weekend was. I still have one more chance to qualify for PT Atlanta, so if you’re going to GP Minneapolis, I’ll see you there.

Props

Frank Skarren for winning the GP, and for showing me the power of Necrobite
Reid Duke, William Jensen, and Christian Calcano for top 8ing and proving that limited is still a skill game
Danny Goldstein for representing Maryland in the top 8 – nice job dude!
Wizards for increasing the GP payout for massive events
Gerard Fabiano for locking up Frank Skarren as a 3rd for us for the classic in Roanoke, before he won the GP and had a chance to big time us
Vishu & Ernie for putting up me and Yoel for the weekend
3T for inviting me to Barcade and shipping me some quarters to battle with, and for the ride back to Vishu’s house on Saturday night
Vlad Reznik and Alex Nastetsky for introducing me to Werewolf – without all those games we played in the past few years, there’s no way I’d be able to hold my own in these cutthroat Magic pro games
Josh McClain for organizing all the post-GP wolf games, Harry Corvese, Alex Hayne, and Seth Manfield for being stone masters at the game, and Craig Wescoe for that nasty vigilante sandbag that ended up winning us the 26 player game
Tim Aten and Tommy Ashton for helping me pin down the origin of DI
Chris Mascioli for being my best friend forever
You. Yes, you. For reading this, liking it, commenting on it, etc. Magic culture is a living, breathing organism, and by reading and passing along stories from events that can’t be seen in the coverage and perhaps telling your own from time to time, you are helping to keep it alive. Jeff Cunningham was right about everything.

Slops

Anand for making me bring his Super Series water bottle home from Phoenix to give to him in Philly and then forgetting it in my car after we dropped him off
Gabby for literally being too jewish to come to the GP
Joe Demestrio for 0-3ing draft 2 at 10-2 and failing to qualify for PT Atlanta, again
Mincash Davoudi for getting 101st place and not living up to his clever nickname, and for charging me $10 for sets
Owen Turtenwald for being the only PGO brother not to top 8 – you have dishonored your famiry
Justin Vizaro for misspelling my name in the coverage of my feature match – although he did fix it when I asked him nicely, and his coverage overall was great (even though I lost the match), so he gets double props which brings him back into the black
Oliver Tomajko for always coming up first whenever I try to find myself in the pairings list by doing a ctrl+F for “maj”
Brad Taulbee for not hanging out with us on Saturday night, and Semion Bezrukov for day 2ing the GP and deciding that it wasn’t worth it to stay for Sunday
Me for getting pen on my shirt within 20 minutes of putting it on Sunday morning, which has to be a new record
Mikey P for not letting me use his Dominion cards to take all of Ben Moir’s money
Wizards for the 5 GP cap – it sucks that Huey top 8ed and still doesn’t get any pro points
Every non-Amish stand in the Reading Terminal Market for being closed on Sunday, especially the pizza place
Carrera Shanté for this wack mixtape – man shit homegirl, make your own damn beats


Thank you for reading!